John Cook's Lilydale to Jerusalem Creek Ride 14 Jan 2018

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15 riders left Lilydale to follow John Cook on what turned out to be an excellent day’s riding. The rain beat a hasty retreat, the sun came out and the birds sang us across the Black Spur and on to Marysville for morning tea. With John as our tour guide, Holly Fields as TEC and Greg G and Pat R sharing the photographer duties, it was up, up and away. I was humming this song to myself on the way over – The Prez, Greg Rees, must have overheard me because he took my advice and left us to it at Marysville and returned home to a list of chores.

After Marysville, we made our way up through the Eastern Highlands and along the Skyline Road!! The views up there at the lookout were amazing. I saw an Echidna on the roadside, and a magnificent Wedge Tailed Eagle, gliding only 50 feet above the road. As a stand in Jimmy Olsen (Clark Kent’s photographer), Greg G went ahead and got a string of action shots coming down to Eildon. Two German tourists in a troop carrier pulled up and chatted with Greg while he prepared to photograph everyone coming through – a quick chat about them touring here and then off to NZ, and some too-ings and fro-ings about Greg & Sally in Munich 18 months ago led to an exchange of caps – Greg scored a German BMW MotorradClub hat in return for an “ISAF World Sailing Cup Melbourne 2016” cap (see pic). Lovely people!!

We made Jerusalem Creek in time for a very nice lunch together, and a ride home across the Black Spur, by then very busy with 4 wheeled motorcycling obstructions called !!##8%*^@$$%($## cars!! Well, that’s what Greg G and Jack Fei, riding home together, called them. Having wrestled a half tonne of fuel in his GSA all the way around the ride, an amused Greg G saw Jack pull in for fuel at Mooroolbark!! Greg became instantly concerned – he was down to his last 350km of fuel!!

On behalf of the ride leader, TEC and photographers, I hope you had as much fun as we did!! Another week next week, and another great ride!! See you there!!

Addition from Pat Ryan of a video going up to Alexandra. https://youtu.be/_FcHiMgxHKU - click here to see the view from my chest! Fast forward to about 3.20 minutes in to see the turn then the run over the bridges and up the back road to Alexandra.